Toilet brushes are typically used to swirl cleaning chemicals around a toilet bowl and then to scrub the sides of the bowl with those chemicals and water, so as to assist in removing stains along the bowl sides. Such brushes usually have brush bristles that are permanently affixed to the handle of the brush.
After using such brushes a consumer will typically attempt to rinse off the brush by swirling it in the bowl water. This rinsing process may be repeated through one or more additional rinsing flushes. While this may rinse off most of the cleaning chemicals, feces, urine, and stray bits of paper typically found in the toilet, the brushes still normally retain some contaminants even after extensive rinsing. As a result, such brushes can develop an unpleasant smell or appearance during storage.
Regardless, such brushes will be dripping wet immediately after use. The consumer sometimes will therefore shake the brush over the toilet to try to remove most of the excess water, and then quickly move the brush into a storage bucket. This can result in some liquid being splashed or dripped on the floor. In any event, a storage place for the brush is needed between uses where drippings can collect.
The art therefore designed toilet brushes where permanent brush handles were provided, but the brush heads were formed as disposable and replaceable elements. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,755,497, 4,031,673, 5,630,243, and 6,094,771. See also GB 2,329,325. These brushes were designed so that a small replaceable head could be flushed down the toilet after each use. Some such heads were impregnated with a cleaning composition to avoid the need to separately add a cleaning chemical.
However, these devices typically relied on relatively weak frictional attachments to connect the replaceable brush head to the wand/handle. The head would therefore sometimes accidentally/prematurely fall off during use (before the cleaning was complete, such as during vigorous scrubbing of a stubborn stain).
Also, certain types of such brush heads could cause clogging problems, or be otherwise unsuitable for use with sensitive septic systems. This might be due to the size of the head, or to extra structures (such as cardboard bands) used to hold head parts together.
In other prior art devices, some formed their disposable brush heads from highly water-degradable material. Unfortunately, the material they chose sometimes would begin to fall apart before the cleaning process was completed, particularly when aggressive scrubbing was attempted. Further, such material was so flexible that it made it difficult to transmit scrubbing force from the handle to the brush head portion without risking the handle scratching the bowl sides.
Still other brush assemblies of this type required the consumer to provide a continuous pressure to keep the head in contact with the wand. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,631,791 and 2,290,894. This could lead to hand strain, and in some cases to premature release of the head.
Still other such brushes were difficult to assemble or disassemble. See e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 245,585.
Other devices of this type could not be produced efficiently with automated equipment. With those, the cost of the devices was such as to make them less competitive in the marketplace.
In GB 2,329,325 there was disclosed a toilet brush with a head portion made of a stack of bound sheets of water-dissolvable material. However, this relied on an undesirable adhesive feature, and in any event had other undesirable characteristics.
A number of other prior brush heads had their bristles spread too quickly under brushing force, making scrubbing somewhat more difficult than optimal. Still other brush heads had other deficiencies.
Thus, a need continued to exist for improved toilet brushes having replaceable brush heads.